The present disclosure relates to fields of networking technologies, and particularly to methods, systems and apparatuses for web access using cross-domain cookies.
Internet cookie is a technology that allows a website server storing a little amount of data into hard disk or memory of a client, or reading data from hard disk of a client. Because of its simplicity, Internet cookie technology has made browsing a web page much easier. Almost every webmaster has used cookies both for providing a superior browsing environment for visiting users, and for collecting information of the visiting users more accurately.
Cookies is a small text file placed by a Web server into a client's hard disk when a certain website is being browsed, and records such user information as user ID, password, web page(s) visited, and duration of stay. When the user re-visits the website, the website may obtain related information of the user by reading the cookies, and perform relevant operations such as displaying a welcome sign on a web page, or allowing direct user login without entering the ID and the password. In essence, cookies may be considered as a user identification card.
Cookies can neither be executed like a code, nor transmit a virus. Furthermore, a cookie is proprietary to a certain user, and can only be read by a server of the domain that has provided the cookie. Stored pieces of information are saved in a form of name-value pairs, with each name-value pair being merely a named data and nothing more. A website can only obtain information which the website has placed on a user computer, but not information from other cookies files, or any other information in the user computer. Most contents in cookies are encrypted, and are meaningless combinations of alphabets and numbers from the general user's point of view. Only a CGI (i.e., Common Gateway Interface) process of a server may know the true meaning of the cookies. Therefore, a cookie is like an identification card, is proprietary, and can only be read by a website to which the cookies belongs.
However, since cookies is proprietary under existing technologies, each operator or service provider on the Internet can only track activities of a user in its own website. Because each operator can only read its own cookies, the activities of the user obtained a single operator are usually incomplete.